The instant invention relates to feeding and accumulating apparatus for paper sheets and more particularly to a sheet feeder and accumulator having the dual capability of stacking sheets of paper in the same or reverse order in which they are placed in the feeder.
Accumulating modules are frequently used in line with other paper handling equipment as a means of assembling a plurality of sheets of paper into a particular, desired packet prior to further processing, which may include additional collating, folding and inserting into an envelope. In a typical paper handling sequence involving an initial output consisting of a plurality of sheets of paper to be later combined with subsequent output from other sheet feeding devices situated downstream, the initial output is fed from the top of a stack seriatim to the accumulator, which accumulates the output into the desired packets in the reverse order as the sheets had when they were stacked in the hopper of the feeder. Each packet may then be folded, stitched or subsequently combined with other output from document feeding devices located downstream thereof and ultimately inserted into a mailing envelope.
A typical sheet feeder has a hopper in which documents are placed face down. The documents are removed from the hopper from the top and are conveyed to an accumulator where they are accumulated in the reverse order in which they were loaded in the feeder hopper. There are many applications in which it is desirable to have the documents arrive in the accumulator in the same order as they were placed in the feeder hopper and facing down. One option for achieving this result would be to have an additional collating module which would have reverse collating ability. Clearly, this is not a desirable option for users of paper handling equipment.
Accordingly, the instant invention provides apparatus to be used with a sheet feeder and accumulator which allows documents to be fed from the top of the hopper of the sheet feeder and to accumulate in the accumulator in the same order as they were placed in the feeder hopper.